Where in the world are you thinking of?

Best Beaches of Hawaii

Great beaches. Great surf. But where to go? Ron Hall finds the answer between wind and wave.

This story originally appeared in CondéNast Traveler's July 1996 issue.

Visit Waimea Bay, on Oahu, anytime between May and September and you'll most likely find a haven of peace and tranquility, fishing boats bobbing lazily at anchor, snorkelers patrolling the rocky headlands, and kids splashing at the water's edge. Visit the bay during the winter months, however—November through March—and you'll find it transformed into a fearsome spectacle of ocean power, with waves twenty, even thirty, feet high crowding into the bay, turning it into bands of seething foam. Surfers everywhere talk about Waimea with awe: It is the beach famed for having the biggest ridable waves in the world.

Ridable, of course, is a relative term. Only the elite of the world's surfers even attempt Waimea on a big day, and even then largely in a spirit of bravado. "When surfing Waimea," says the Surfer's Guide to Hawaii, only half jokingly, "it is essential to have the proper crazed attitude that implies a certain reckless disregard for personal safety."

At the time of my visit, Waimea was mourning its latest victim. A young professional surfer named Donnie Solomon, from Ventura, California, had taken off on an eighteen-foot wave just behind the world surfing champion, Kelly Slater of Florida. Slater made it safely to the beach, but Solomon had narrowly failed to push up through the collapsing lip of the wave, was "caught inside," as surfers say, and disappeared under tons of water. By the time the lifeguards reached him, it was too late.

The Jekyll and Hyde nature of Hawaii's beaches, the way they can change character from one season to the next, or even one day to the next, makes writing about them difficult. Take Magic Sands Beach on the Big Island's Kona Coast. Its ample covering of pristine white sand has the habit of suddenly disappearing in certain surf conditions, leaving behind only naked black rock. Once conditions return to normal, the sand magically reappears. Nobody is quite sure where the sand goes in its absences, but they clearly do it no harm. Each time it returns, it has been flushed of debris and is even more brilliantly white than before.

Many other beaches vary with the seasons. In summer, Papohaku Beach on Molokai claims to be the most expansive in all the Hawaiian Islands, occupying two miles of virgin, dune-backed coast at an average width of more than a hundred yards; but in winter the beach narrows to less than half that size. Either way, however, it's a magnificent sight that might have been even more imposing but for the fact that in the 1960s a great amount of its sand was shipped to Honolulu, where it was used to replenish Waikiki Beach, which then, as now, had an erosion problem.

Wind direction and surf levels are the two main factors governing the day-to-day character of Hawaii's beaches. For most of the year, northeast trade winds prevail, but they are punctuated by periods of humid kona weather, when winds come from the south or the southwest (kona is Hawaiian for leeward). Surf levels rise and fall independent of the local weather, often as the result of storms 2,500 miles away in the Aleutian Islands. The geographic isolation of the Hawaiian Islands means there is no intervening land mass to diffuse the ocean swells, and no continental shelf to deaden their impact. Hawaii thus receives some of the most powerful waves in the world—good news, perhaps, for surfing, the sport that Hawaii invented, but it means that swimmers and other recreational ocean users need to select their beaches with care. The map that follows is designed to help them do so.

For this map I enlisted the help of Hawaii's premier beach expert, John R. K. Clark, author of a scholarly four-volume series of guidebooks on the subject, published by the University of Hawaii Press. Clark's research began thirty years ago, when he was a young lifeguard operating at Sandy Beach and Makapu'u Point in southeast Oahu. Both were popular bodysurfing spots and deceptively innocent in appearance. A secluded cove near Sandy Beach was even used as a romantic movie location, resulting in one of the great love scenes of cinema: the kiss in From Here to Eternity. But the trouble was that bodysurfing on these two beaches was a great deal tougher than it looked, and there were (and still are) many accidents and broken bones. It was to get across a safety message that the young lifeguard started to write, but he soon broadened the scope to include the geology and history of each beach. Clark spent twenty-five years completing his labor of love, taking a degree in Hawaiian studies in the process. The last volume—devoted to the beaches of Kauai and Ni'ihau—was published in 1990. In the meantime, Clark had been holding down a day job as a fireman with some success; he is now a battalion chief in the Honolulu Fire Department.

Waikiki is not only the best-known and most versatile beach in Hawaii, it is arguably the most famous city beach in the world. In comparison with its three main rivals for this distinction, Waikiki is not particularly large: Bondi in Australia is broader, Acapulco in Mexico is longer, and Copacabana in Brazil dwarfs it in every respect. But what Waikiki does have more of than any beach I can think of is a sense of its own history, a self-promoted image of fun, glamour, and wealth that even now communicates itself infectiously to visitors.

Where else, for example, do youths follow the humble calling of beachboy with such aplomb? You would think they were gondoliers or matadors from the way they swagger, not just hired hands in beach concessions. At the root of their self-regard is the cult of Duke Kahanamoku—still remembered, nearly thirty years after his death, as the king of all beachboys. At dusk each weekend evening, next to the Waikiki Beach Center, a quasi-religious ceremony takes place as barefoot boys dressed in the red and yellow costume of ancient Hawaii arrive to light torches around Duke's garlanded statue.

Duke, the inscription on the statue informs the few who don't know, was a full-blooded Hawaiian, born in 1890 and raised in Waikiki, who was the world'ds fastest swimmer (three gold medals, two silvers, and a bronze in four Olympics between 1912 and 1932), a champion canoe steersman, and an innovative surfer who introduced the sport to Australia and Europe. Later in life he was sheriff of Honolulu for thirteen successive terms, a bit-part movie actor, and Hawaii's "Ambassador of Aloha," who became the living symbol of the Hawaiian state. The inscription might also have added that he was a dab hand at the ukelele—partying with film stars and millionaires was then an essential part of the beachboy role.

Today's beachboy scene may be less socially ambitious, but it still thrives. It centers on a large, crowded bar named, of course, Duke's, on the beach between Waikiki's two most historic hotels, the Moana and the Royal Hawaiian. The bar's popularity with beachboys may have something to do with the fact that drinks are sold to them at a discount, a dollar a beer. They, in turn, are expected to attract the female Baywatch clones they have met during the day on the beach, an arrangement that seems to suit everybody. It is one of those friendly sorts of bars where, as the evening progresses, all end up with each other—although whether this is an expression of mass aloha or just a device to prevent falling over is not entirely clear.

One night at Duke's I was told that the following day, "Rabbit" would be working at the beach concession, as he does each Monday and Wednesday, and that I ought to talk to him.

"Rabbit? Who's he?" I asked, realizing too late that merely to pose the question was instantly to lose all credibility.

"Rabbit," I was grandly informed, "is a legend."

Feeling a little underprepared for an encounter with a legend, I telephoned Surfer magazine in California to ask if they had heard of a beachboy called Rabbit.

"Well, yes, we have, as a matter of fact," said a patient voice. "Rabbit Kekai. He's seventy-five and still surfs competitively, and let me put it this way: If Bobbie Jones suddenly turned up on the Seniors Tour and started winning again, that's no more than what Rabbit does every day. He's won more championships than anyone can remember, but what's so interesting is that he bridges the gap between the early roots of the sport—Duke and all those old guys on their long, heavy wooden boards—and the modern high-performance hotdoggers like Kelly Slater."

The following day I duly joined Rabbit at his counter, where he was using his smattering of Japanese to advise a girl from Tokyo on what kind of board to rent. It was a lengthy process, with frequent pauses for photography. "Someone wrote about me in a Japanese magazine," Rabbit explained, "so now they all want my picture." Eventually the girl handed over the dollars. "That's the way it's done," said Rabbit, pleased with his display of salesmanship. "Cool and easy, talk to 'em nice and they'll be back again tomorrow."

Seeing that I was carrying a book entitled Waikiki Beachboy, he opened it with a well-rehearsed flourish to a youthful photograph of himself and offered me his autograph. "To Ron," he wrote. "Aloha from Rabbit Kekai, legend."

Rabbit's graying hair and wispy goatee are the only clues to his advancing years; his body is still that of a highly trained athlete. I tried to get him talking about his first encounters with Duke, more than sixty years ago, but he was more interested in telling me about present-day beachboy concerns.

Three years ago, Rabbit and a few dozen of his colleagues banded together to start up a Beachboys Association. Social clubs for beachboys—most famously the Outrigger Canoe Club and Hui Nalu—have existed in Waikiki since the arrival of the first hotels at the beginning of this century, but they were aimed at promoting competitive water sports rather than protecting the beachboys' financial interests. The new Beachboys Association has a quite different agenda—its main function is to establish health insurance and retirement pensions for beachboys; a fund for this purpose, said Rabbit, is already accumulating in the bank.

The old-style, feckless, fun-loving beachboys would, one suspects, turn in their graves at the very thought of something so mundane as contributing to a pension fund. It was to avoid the obligations and ties of regular employment that many of them adopted the beachboy life in the first place. Rabbit, however, is one old-style beachboy who is hotly in favor of the idea. He is, after all, one of the few beachboys incontrovertibly of pensionable age.

Although Waikiki is nearly two miles long, most of the action takes place on the short, central Royal-Moana section. Here the beach is intimate in scale, just wide enough to beach a catamaran. It can, of course, get crowded. But, mercifully, nobody has reacted by staking out ranks of recliners and beach umbrellas, the way they do in Europe. In fact, for anyone who (like me) has grown used to the beaches of the Mediterranean, Waikiki seems remarkably laid-back and civilized. From the beach, not a single neon sign is to be seen. There are no importunate beach traders, no lethal water-skiers (speedboats and Hawaiian surf don't mix). Beach maintenance is good, there is an all-day lifeguard watch, and at night there is the reassurance of regular police dune buggy patrols.

Even Waikiki's skyscraper hotels were less oppressive than I had been warned to expect. The architects who added high-rise wings to the Royal Hawaiian and the Moana preserved enough of the originals for them still to relate happily to the beach. The Royal Hawaiian—or the Pink Palace, as it is often called because of its dashing color scheme—is still Waikiki's architectural gem, although it is rivaled by the Moana's newly restored Banyan Court, a three-sided veranda set around an enormous banyan tree that makes a wonderful interface between hotel and sea. The Halekulani, another stylish and historic hotel, noted for its restaurants, sadly has a beach-erosion problem, but its handsome seaside buildings have also been kept to a human scale.

Erosion is Waikiki's biggest headache. Thousands of tons of sand have been poured onto different sections of the beach, only to wash steadily out into the bay. As a result, seabed contours have been altered and the pattern of surfing breaks changed. In Duke's day it was possible for surfers to ride for nearly a mile on Waikiki's long waves, overlapping from one break to the next. It suited their "posing" style. When giving exhibitions, Duke and his gang would ride their huge boards with boys standing on their shoulders, or with adoring female tourists in their arms, or even—one of Duke's favorite tricks—while standing on their heads.

To see at their best the more dynamic, balletic maneuvers of present-day surfers, it is necessary to make the journey to Oahu's North Shore. Here, a continuous two-mile strip of sandy beach beginning just north of Waimea Bay (where our story began) gives access to a succession of world-class surfing breaks, of which the most famous—or at least the most photographed—is Pipeline. Look at the cover of any surfing book or magazine and it is a near certainty that it will be a picture of someone "riding the tube" at Pipeline. The combination of a powerful swell and a shallow reef shapes the waves there into hollow cylinders into which a surfer can disappear and, with luck, reemerge before the wave swallows him up. On the beach, an international army of professional photographers—more than fifty on a big day—track each ride with huge telephoto lenses, in the hope of capturing the perfect Pipeline moment. The stakes can be high. A shot sold for advertising might fetch several thousand dollars, but most of the photographers go home frustrated. Getting the wave, the surfer, and the logos all in the right place, when everything is happening so quickly, requires fortune as well as skill.

At the top end of the North Shore is Sunset Beach, which many connoisseurs regard as the best surfing spot of all, with the most consistent high-quality waves. A surfing community has grown up there, complete with a cottage industry of board shapers and equipment suppliers. But be warned: Unlike the beachboy hangouts of Waikiki, Sunset is not a fun place. Top surfers these days lead an ascetic life, off to bed early so they can be back in the water at the first light of dawn. In Australia I once saw a graffito that said SURFERS ARE THE MONKS OF HEDONISM. It took a trip to Sunset for me to find out how true that is.

In the southeast of Oahu is another string of recreational beaches, though of a very different nature. Just a twenty-minute drive from Waikiki is Hanauma Bay, the best year-round snorkeling spot in the Hawaiian Islands. Hanauma began its geologic life as a coastal volcanic crater that was breached by the sea to make an almost circular bay. The steep crater walls and a fringing reef combine to make the bay millpond-smooth, whatever the weather. Seen from above, the white sandy seabed gives the bay a turquoise glow, mottled with dark patches of living coral, reminiscent of the luminous lagoon colors of the South Pacific rather than the deeper ocean hues of Hawaii. Since 1967, Hanauma's underwater environment has been protected by a ban on all forms of Wshing; hence its rich stock of tropical marine life. The large white beach can get crowded—particularly on weekends, for it is popular with residents as well as tourists—but if you keep your mask in the water and look at fish rather than people, Hanauma Bay is magical.

Soon after Hanauma, the road swings northward to Waimanalo Bay, and to further benign swimming locations. Waimanalo has the longest uninterrupted stretch of beach in Oahu, with three and a half miles of powdery sand, backed for most of that distance by tall, shady ironwood trees. The bay has a gently sloping sandy bottom, and the current runs alongshore rather than out to sea, presenting no danger to the average swimmer.

The opening section of the beach is known locally as Sherwood Forest, because it is said that some years ago, a gang of car thieves with Robin Hood-like pretensions operated there. As it happens, I know the real Sherwood Forest well—it was close to my childhood home—and I can assure the burghers of Waimanalo that there is no resemblance at all between their lovely ironwood forest and the sad collection of crumbling oaks that are all that's left of Sherwood. But it is a useful reminder, nonetheless, to empty the car of valuables when going to the beach. Some of the best-known Hawaiian beaches have become so notorious for theft that John Clark advised against recommending them on our map.

The north end of Waimanalo Bay is known as Bellows Field Beach, for the simple reason that access to it is through the Bellows Air Force Base and is permitted only on weekends (noon on Friday through midnight on Sunday). It is beautiful, unspoiled coastline, with the jagged Ko'olau Mountains behind making a long, graceful curve to Wailea Point—further evidence for my belief that eventually the only virgin land left on the planet will be that sterilized by the military. Yet another notable year-round swimming beach, Lanikai, is just on the other side of Wailea Point (though reachable only by a detour). It is backed by a very well-heeled suburb of the same name, whose residents keep an expensive lineup of small sailing craft there. Two offshore islets add to the prettiness of the view, and a pleasant beach walk from Lanikai northward along the bay gets you to Kailua Beach, which, along with Ho'okipa on Maui, is noted as Hawaii's, if not the world's, top windsurfing location.

Kauai is the Hawaiian island with the greatest density of beaches. Nearly forty-five percent of its coastline is clothed in white sand, double the percentage on Oahu, its closest rival.

Kauai's beaches had their most famous moment in 1957, with the shooting of the movie South Pacific. There have, of course, been countless theories about exactly which island gave James Michener the idea for Bali-ha'i (my vote goes to Manono in Samoa), but when it came to finding a location for the movie, northern Kauai was the undisputed choice. The beach of Lumaha'i was used for the big scene of Cable's arrival on Bali-ha'i; other scenes were shot on the more sheltered neighboring beaches of Tunnels and Hanalei Bay. Even now, forty years after the event, the citizens of Hanalei aren't going to let you forget. "Bali Hai Restaurant," "Bali Hai Villas," "Bali Hai Helicopters," "Bali Hai Realty" . . . say the signs down the main street.

Hanalei is also a good starting point for adventures along the precipitous Na Pali Coast of western Kauai. Five spectacular beaches nestle at the foot of these rugged cliffs. There are no roads, but the Wrst of the beaches, Hanakapi
ai, is within half-day hiking range. Others visit Na Pali by helicopter, kayak, or boat—the only means of getting to Honopu, the most beautiful of the beaches—although anyone contemplating the kayaking option is advised first to read Sue Halpern's alarming report in Condé Nast Traveler ("Hawaii on the Wild Side," October 1993).

South of the Na Pali precipices is a magnificent wilderness of beach and high dunes called Polihale, of which the central section is known as Barking Sands. Access to Barking Sands is via a naval missile base of the same name, which, surprisingly, lets you drive through—except when war games are in progress (a recorded message at 808-335-4229 gives the times; a driver's license is needed for I.D.).

The "barking sands" phenomenon was described in 1875 by a Mr. W. R. Frink of Honolulu in a letter to the California Academy of Sciences. "If you slap two handfuls of sand together," he wrote, "a sound is produced like the hooting of an owl. If a person kneels on the steep incline [of the dunes] and then, with the two hands extended and grasping as much sand as possible, slides rapidly down carrying all the sand he can, the sound accumulates till it is like distant thunder. But the greatest sound we produced was by having one native lie upon his belly and another take him by the feet and drag him rapidly down the incline. With this experiment, the sound was terrific and could have been heard many yards away."

Not having any natives with me, I attempted to repeat the experiments single-handed. I slapped sand together, slithered on it, jumped on it, and rolled on it. No sound emerged. At some personal risk, I launched myself head-first down the dunes exactly as Frink had specified. Still no sound. By now I was covered head to toe with sand, feeling rather foolish, and attracting strange looks from people on the beach. I reread details of Frink's experiment: He had sent a sample of the sand to California, where, so the story went, examination under a microscope revealed that each grain of sand was perforated with a small hole which acted as a resonant cavity. I began to smell a rat. Surely the smaller a resonant cavity the higher its pitch—that's why piccolos play high notes and tubas play low notes. So how did cavities smaller than a grain of sand produce deep notes like rumbling thunder or hooting owls?

On my way out of the Barking Sands missile facility, I asked the guard if he had ever personally heard the sands bark. "Can't say I have, sir," he replied warily, "but lots of people come here to try." I called up John Clark, my mentor in Oahu, who pointed out that the Hawaiians have a special phrase for "sounding sands," which they applied to this beach, and also that "singing sands" have been recorded in other parts of the world, from Sinai to the Gobi Desert. But no, he hadn't actually heard it with his own ears. After a good deal of additional inquiry, I found nobody with first-hand experience of barking sands. Perhaps the time has come for further examination of Mr. Frink's credentials.

Po'ipu, on the sunny south shore of Kauai, is the island's busiest seaside location. The main beach is unusual: A broad sandbar stretches from the shore to a rocky offshore islet, creating a sheltered swimming lagoon and ample sunbathing space. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the neighboring small bays were colonized by condos and a couple of hotels. Then, sadly, Po'ipu was twice ravaged by hurricanes—Iwa in 1982 and Iniki in 1992. The beach itself recovered, but not all of the buildings. Several have remained semiderelict, crudely fenced off from the beaches and something of an eyesore.

Fortunately, by traveling eastward from Po'ipu past the smart new Hyatt Regency Resort and then along a broad dirt road (a "cane-haul road" built for the sugar plantations), after a couple of miles you come to Maha'ulepu (also signposted as Kawailoa), a wonderfully varied two-mile stretch of virgin coastline with a catalog of coastal features: dunes, sea cliffs, limestone caves, a sea stack, coral formations, ironwood forests, and a succession of beaches, each of differing character. Kauai residents come here on weekends for all sorts of beach activity: swimming, windsurfing, kayaking, fishing, diving, spearfishing, surfing, bodysurfing, bodyboarding, snorkeling, beachcombing, archaeology-tracking, bird-watching, fossil-hunting—even picnicking and sunbathing. Amazing, really, how many things people have thought of doing on a beach.

Privately owned Lanai is the island where everything comes in pairs. There are two contrasting resorts, both of the highest quality: One is a stylized hunting lodge set on a cool, pine-clad upland plain (the Lodge at Koele); the other, an exotic, tropical seaside hotel set a cool, pine-clad upland plain (the Lodge at Koele); the other an exotic, tropical seaside hotel set around a palm-fringed swimming pool (the Manele Bay Hotel). There are two golf courses, one scenic and coastal, the other mountainous and dramatic. So it seems only right that there should be two contrasting beaches: one wild, untamed, and beautiful, the other gentle, well-groomed, and practical.

Hulopo'e Beach is the gentle one. Like Hanauma on Oahu, it is a marine conservation district and, in all but high-surf conditions, has excellent snorkeling, particularly along the lava rocks at the eastern end of the white crescent beach. A comfortable flight of steps leads down from the Manele Bay Hotel to the beach, where beachboys in a hut issue snorkeling equipment free of charge. This is beachgoing at its easiest and most painless. Polihua Beach, on the north coast of Lanai, is the exact opposite. Even with four-wheel-drive, the boulder-strewn tracks leading there are tricky. The beach has no reef to contain dangerous currents, and the trade winds can sandblast exposed skin until it's raw. And yet if you catch Polihua on a tranquil kona day, it is, for my money, the most beautiful beach for walking in all of Hawaii—a vast expanse of soft, pale brown sand stretching off to infinity, framed on one side by a wilderness of dunes and kiawe forest and on the other by views across the channel to Molokai, where, in winter, whales disport themselves just yards from the beach. Two shipwrecks add an extra sense of otherworldliness. One wreck, a couple of miles east of Polihua, can be reached by a determined beach walker; the other is easily approached via "Shipwreck Bay," at the opposite end of the beach.

The beaches of Oahu, Kauai, and Lanai are so uniformly white in color that it is almost a relief to arrive on the Big Island and find something entirely different. I had often enough seen black sand beaches, but green sand was quite new to me.

The secret is the olivine, a sparkling, olive-colored gemstone that occurs in volcanic lava. Stones of collectible size are rarely found, but in places where solidified lava is subject to erosion by the sea, tiny olivines, no bigger than grains of sand, are released by the billion—enough in some cases to clothe entire beaches. The most famous of these, in the Ka'u district of the Big Island, is known simply as Green Sand Beach.

Getting there is most of the fun. First, drive south until you can do so no more without falling off the island. You are now at the southernmost point of the United States of America—although, strangely, there is nothing here to inform you of the fact. Abandon your car at the Kaulana boat ramp, the place where the road peters out, and set off walking eastward along a wild and windswept clifftop plateau. After a couple of miles, the cliff takes on the shape of a volcanic cone from which the wind and waves have nibbled a lonely, steep-sided bay. At the head of the bay is a long and narrow beach that, sure enough, is an unmistakable glinting ghostly green that grows darker and more intense the closer you get to it. That, however, is where the novelty ends. I have to report that lying on green sand is much the same as lying on any other colored sand, and after a few minutes you cease even to notice. Still, the walk alone makes it worth the journey.

The Big Island, with its active volcanoes, has no shortage of black sand beaches. The prettiest, complete with palm trees and a duck pond, is at Punalu'u, in the south. But the superb white sand beaches of the Kohala Coast are the ones that attract the greatest number of people—and the greatest controversy.

In the seventies, one of these beaches, Kauna'oa, was the object of a legal cause célèbre when four Hawaiians brought an action against the island's pioneering luxury resort, the Mauna Kea, for blocking off their traditional beach access (beaches in Hawaii are public property, but not necessarily the land behind them). Litigation rumbled on for eight years, until a public right-of-way was conceded, along with some limited parking space. Hawaiian hotel builders have since been punctilious in providing public access, although adequate parking is still a contentious issue.

More recently, the Mauna Kea, now under Japanese ownership, was involved in another dispute. The new owners wanted to extend the resort by adding a second large hotel that would spill over onto the neighboring Hapuna Beach. This was sensitive territory: Hapuna had long been regarded as the Big Island's "people's beach," a superb sweep of white sand that on a summer weekend attracted hundreds from all over the island. There was a Save Hapuna campaign and an islandwide ballot, but eventually the desire for development and new jobs won out. It would be an exaggeration to suggest that the newly completed Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel has done the beach mortal harm; it is well enough landscaped, and public access is not a problem. But "this far and no farther" now seems to be the local consensus.

Similar debates have been taking place on Maui, where only one major beach remains in its virgin state: Makena, in Maui's extreme southwest.

Makena has had a checkered recent history. Between 1968 and 1972 it was the most notorious of Hawaii's several hippie beaches, sealed off from the rest of Maui by dense thickets of thorny kiawe trees. At peak, about a hundred hippies lived there in tents and shanties, often nude except for beads and headbands, and smoking Maui Wowie, their locally grown marijuana. Maui's kama'aina population was divided on the subject. A few envied the hippies' apparent rediscovery of the idyllic lifestyle of ancient Polynesia, but the majority sided with the police chief, who declared them to be unwanted bums, to be seen off the island by any means possible. The police mounted an expensive helicopter raid but, to general amusement, succeeded in arresting only two skinny-dippers. It was not until April 1972 that the authorities finally succeeded in evicting the hippies on grounds of public health.

The hippie era still has echoes. Little Makena, a pretty cove just to the north of the main beach, is sometimes used for (illegal) nudism and attracts nostalgic visits by aging hippies, some still dressed in beaded splendor. But Makena itself has reverted to being a decorous family beach magnificent in scale and, that rarity in Hawaii, a beach without visible man-made development. A rumor that the landowners of the kiawe forest were about to develop it as a hotel complex resulted in such a public outcry that the extremely valuable land was purchased by the state to create a beach park.

It seems ironic that the people of Hawaii, a state that has more than three hundred named beaches of every possible kind, should find themselves having to conduct campaigns to preserve a few beaches that they can freely use for themselves. Happily, the excess of new resort building in the 1970s and 1980s seems now to have come full circle, and the attentions of the construction industry have recently been focused more on the improvement and renovation of existing resorts than on the creation of new ones. This emphasis on quality rather than quantity must surely be the sensible way ahead.